City holds open house on what to do with Edmonton's Coliseum

Tiare Jung of Drawing Change visualizes citizens' ideas on a board during an open house at Commonwealth Stadium seeking opinions from the public on what should be done with the Coliseum at Northlands in Edmonton, Alta., on Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2016.Codie McLachlan/Postmedia

If you thought six ice rinks packed into Edmonton’s Northlands Coliseum was far-fetched, you’re not thinking hard enough.

“I often think if there was a gym where you could play hide-and-seek or tag, that would be so much better. It would be awesome. A dodgeball court in there, drop-in dodgeball,” said 25-year-old Adam Melnyk with an excited laugh.

Melnyk was one of the Edmontonians who dropped in to the first of two open houses the city is holding to find out what the public would like to see done with the aging former home of the Oilers.

“This is really about getting some feedback from our citizens, both from a community level but also from a sport organization level,” said Judi Rohovie, director of Terwillegar, Clareview and The Meadows recreation centres and one of the people working with the city’s citizen services department to gather public opinion on the future of the building.

Northlands proposed a six-rink facility to offer ice sports year round and attract more tournaments to the city. That option is still on the table, as is tearing the building down altogether. But city council asked staff to see if residents could come up with other plans.

They set up stations in a room at the Commonwealth Recreation Centre for people to show support for various uses, use a Velcro board to move scaled elements around on the building to see what would fit into it, and write in new ideas that haven’t already been mentioned.

Some of the early suggestions that got support were an equine arena, a running and walking track, climbing wall, skateboard park, table tennis, hockey and open activities for seniors.

“Because it’s a blank slate … you could really do so many different things in it and that’s what we want to find out what Edmontonians think we should put in,” said Tim Harris, the city’s arena and field facility supervisor.

Harris said it would be easy to put in six ice sheets but that might not be the right fit for the building and the community in general.

“You want to make it as multi-purpose as you can,” he said, adding some have suggested building a BMX track and others have said they’d like to see e-sports — electronic gaming — more represented.

“Who would have thought pickleball would have been a thing 20 years ago? It’s like tennis but they play with a plastic racket and wiffle balls. It’s hugely popular in our aging communities,” Harris said, adding some rec centres have had to re-organize court time to meet the demand for pickleball already.

The open house isn’t just looking for ideas for uses. City staff want feedback from sports organizers who are either interested in helping to offer the activities as well as anyone looking to be a part of the building or funding of the venue.

“This is totally exploration so people don’t have to put their chequebook down, but if they’re interested in being a partner on a capital perspective, they could say, ‘We’ve got money, we need a space and we’re willing to give you money to be a partner in this building,’” said Rohovie.

For Melnyk, having activities that are accessible to the most people is as important as the facilities themselves.

The city is holding one more open house Thursday at Commonwealth Recreation Centre from 3 to 8 p.m. and are also accepting online submissions from potential partners and online feedback forms. Those can be found by searching for Coliseum Transformation on the city’s website.

The information will be compiled, brought back to the public for further review early next year and then brought to city council in April.

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